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Current Issue
The Future of the Book (
Autumn
2009 issue)
THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK
The printed word is under unprecedented assault. The battle is not just a duel among businesses and technologies—what’s being decided is the future of how we think, and how we perceive the world.
In the Beginning Was the Word | By Christine Rosen
Three Tweets for the Web | By Tyler Cowen
The Battle of the Books | By Alex Wright
Before the Fall
By Andrew Curry | In a magical moment 20 years ago, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Here is the story of the little-appreciated efforts by East German dissidents that made the magic possible.
Bullet Trains for America?
By Mark Reutter | The Obama administration has put high-speed rail back on the U.S. agenda. There’s much to learn from experience with fast trains in Europe and Asia, and even America’s past.
Exit Lessons
By David M. Edelstein | The history of past military interventions yields five clear guidelines on how to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Seventies Shift
By Michael Barone | A coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics reflects on the unexpected changes of the past 40 years.
EDITOR’S COMMENT
LETTERS
FROM THE CENTER
FINDINGS
IN ESSENCE
Our survey of notable articles from other journals and magazines
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
The Cult of Experts, from
National Affairs
Three Flags, from The Gettysburg Review
ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS
Blind-Sided, from
The New York Times Magazine
The Cost of 9/11, from Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
War and Warming from Environmental Change and Security Project Report, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Climatic Change
L. Paul Bremer, Scapegoat, from
Survival
SOCIETY
How Cities Go Global, from The SAIS Review
Immigrating to Obesity, from International Migration Review
Damned Either Way, from Miller-McCune News Blog
Finding Happiness After Harvard, from The Atlantic
PRESS & MEDIA
Dissembling Defoe, from Columbia Journalism Review
HISTORY
Oil for Containment, from Cold War History
Hamiltonian Exuberance, from Business History Review
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
Russia's Casual Christians, from Christian Century
No One Died in Malerkota, from The Journal of Asian Studies
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Why Sex? from Science
From Foraging to Farming, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
What Cannot Be, from Nature
ARTS & LETTERS
Stop Scribbling! from The Chronicle Review
The Art Recession, from City Journal
Cheek Swabs for Hamlet, from The Nation
OTHER NATIONS
Europe's Envelope Economy, from
Problems of Post-Communism
The Graduate Fixer, from Comparative Studies in Society and History
Saving Africa, from Journal of Economic Literature
CURRENT BOOKS
Knut Hamsun:
Dreamer and Dissenter.
By Ingar Sletten Kolloen, translated by Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik
Reviewed by Michael McDonald
A Question of Command:
Counterinsurgency From the Civil War to Iraq.
By Mark Moyar
Reviewed by Thomas Rid
Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
By Anne C. Heller
Goddess of the Market:
Ayn Rand and the American Right.
By Jennifer Burns
Reviewed by Nick Gillespie
Civil War Wives:
The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimké Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant.
By Carol Berkin
Reviewed by Martha Saxton
Louis D. Brandeis:
A Life.
By Melvin I. Urofsky
Reviewed by Benjamin Wittes
Hollowing Out the Middle:
The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.
By Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas
Methland:
The Death and Life of an American Small Town.
By Nick Reading
Reviewed by Sarah L. Courteau
A Paradise Built in Hell:
The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.
By Rebecca Solnit
Reviewed by Troy Jollimore
What America Read:
Taste, Class, and the Novel, 1920–1960.
By Gordon Hutner
Reviewed by A. J. Loftin
The Age of Comfort:
When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern Home Began.
By Joan DeJean
Reviewed by Winifred Gallagher
Naming Nature:
The Clash Between Instinct and Science.
By Carol Kaesuk Yoon
Reviewed by Rob Dunn
The Age of Wonder:
How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
By Richard Holmes
Reviewed by Britt Peterson
The Evolution of Obesity.
By Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin
Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg
Contemporary American Judaism:
Transformation and Renewal.
By Dana Evan Kaplan
Reviewed by Amy E. Schwartz
PORTRAIT
Flu Masquerade
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Subscriber Hotline
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In Essence
Selections from our review of notable articles
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Contagious Crime
Researchers investigating the "broken windows theory" of crime control found that people are twice as likely to steal from a graffiti-covered mailbox as from one that's pristine.
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The Research Boomerang
Doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton and Bush administrations has had the curious effect of leading to less biomedical research.
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The Sickening State
The most optimistic national estimates
show Russia’s population falling to 136 million in 2020, down from 141 million today. Life expectancy in Russia is among the lowest in the developed world.
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Headscarf Politics
Why would France waste resources on such an economically and politically marginal issue as banning headscarves in schools?
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A Second Surge?
The wisdom of employing an Iraq-like surge in Afghanistan.
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The Local Government Colossus
State governments think it makes sense to consolidate local governing bodies, but at the local level the benefits seem abstract and largely unproven.
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The Clueless Voter
Some political scientists have called for compulsory voting to force citizens to participate in the electoral process. It won't work.
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Spice and Status
New research reveals that spice was not used in medieval times to mask the taste of rancid meat, but rather to infuse good meat with the sweet-sour flavor that was the epitome of the fashionable cooking of the era.
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